Address Funding Inequity

Like bystanders in Las Vegas watching somebody else hit the jackpot, some of Ventura County’s police chiefs and city officials are grumbling about the way Proposition 172 is paying off big for the Sheriff’s Department while trickling only chump change to local cops.

The sheriff gets two-thirds of the $40-million pot generated locally each year by the half-cent sales tax for law enforcement approved by California voters in 1993. Meanwhile, Ventura County’s six city police agencies are left to divvy up a measly 4%.

That formula is rooted in the mess that inspired the Proposition 172 campaign in the first place: the state Legislature’s decision to hijack property tax income from local governments--counties in particular--to balance its own budget during economic hard times. Because the counties lost the most money to the state, giving them the biggest chunk of the Proposition 172 payback was exactly the intention.

The long-range solution to this problem--and many others--would be for the Legislature to return to funding state programs with sales tax money, leaving more property tax income to the cities and counties that generate it. That would reduce the incentive for neighboring cities to sabotage each others’ retail districts and would increase their financial payback for following policies that improve local property values and quality of life.

But if that ever happens, it won’t be soon. Likewise, the campaign proposed by police Chiefs Mike Tracy of Ventura and Bob Gonzales of Santa Paula to change the way Proposition 172 funds are divided would require the Legislature to forget the history of the issue and risk offending all of the state’s counties--another unlikely scenario.

Although we would support a review of the formula in Sacramento, we believe there are immediate steps Ventura County’s law enforcement leaders can take to address this inequity and make sure Proposition 172 funds are being used to best advantage. We believe all the leaders of Ventura County’s criminal justice system share a common goal: an effective system of crime prevention and law enforcement that serves every resident of Ventura County equally.

We applaud Sheriff Bob Brooks for the steps his department has taken to provide top-notch service to unincorporated areas of the county and to the five cities that contract with his agency for local protection. We also note that the Sheriff’s Department spends much of its Proposition 172 jackpot in ways that benefit the entire county: staffing the Todd Road Jail, increasing security at the county courthouse, forming a special crime suppression unit that is available to cities, assigning deputies to a countywide task force on gangs and narcotics, and backing up all of the county’s police forces with the sheriff’s helicopters, bomb squad, dive team and a crime lab, which was recently approved to perform DNA testing.

“Knowing the funding situation, we have tried to do everything we can to support the cities,” Brooks told The Times. “We see this as a law enforcement family.”

We encourage Sheriff Brooks to work closely with local chiefs to make sure the Proposition 172 funds are used as efficiently as possible to ensure safety and justice for all Ventura County residents, especially in support of juvenile crime prevention programs. How safe one is, and how well trained and well equipped one’s police department happens to be, should not depend on a spin of the roulette wheel in Sacramento.